Visaranai

Visaaranai is an uncompromising, hard-hitting and spine-chilling account of abuse of power. When the film begins, we see Pandi (an effective Dinesh), a migrant in Andhra Pradesh, leaving the park where he and his friends have been spending the nights (it is their way of saving the money that they might have to spend on a residence) in the wee hours of the morning and rushing to open the provisional store where he works. It is still not dawn yet but the store's owner is slightly miffed that Pandi is late. A group of men come to the shop asking for an address, but Pandi makes them out as cops from Tamil Nadu and tries to distance himself from whatever their agenda is. The group moves on and moments later, a man comes and asks him if his name is Pandi. The instant he replies yes, the man catches Pandi by the scruff of his neck and forces him into a waiting vehicle, where his friends are helplessly sitting and signalling him not to do anything silly because the men in the vehicle are cops. They are taken to the police station where, all of a sudden, the cops start beating them without bothering to ask them anything.

All this happens in the first ten minutes of the film and we are as clueless as the group of friends as to why they are being treated this way. Pandi thinks they are in trouble because he had, during the previous night, in a foolhardy manner shouted out in public to the girl whom he is in love with (Anandhi in a cameo) — a domestic help in the house of a cop — that he will help her get away from her employer. But then they stumble upon another friend, who tells that he was returning to their place in the night after watching a movie when he was caught by the cops, who mercilessly beat him and asked him to confess to stealing from a house. It is only then that they realise that they have gotten into a sticky situation. The beatings and torture continue, but a resolute Pandi forces them to not accept the charge as they had committed no wrong. But the cops,...

The dark side of the Indian police force.

Another sensational movie from Dhanush K. Raja, the producer of 'The Crow's Egg' that I recently reviewed in this site. This time he joined the hands with the writer, director who bought him a best actor award at the Indian Academy Award for the movie 'Playground'. The film was based on the novel 'Lock Up' that loosely inspired by the experiences of the author who is an autorickshaw driver now.

I already mentioned that Indian cinema is waking up, knocking the doors of the international film critics, films festivals and film buffs. Thanks to the young generation in the film industry, looking for the international market expansion. It's time for you to check it out some of the Indian parallel cinemas, not the masala films. If you think you're totally in an unfamiliar territory, then it will be good to you start with this one.

India is like the European Union, where each nation speaks a different language and its own culture, likewise each Indian state has a different language and culture. That's why it might be called the Indian subcontinent. This story begins when three Tamil labourers who are illegally living in a city park to save rent money from the work in the neighbor state Andhra, will be taken to the police custody without letting know them the reason. The rest of the film exposes the law enforcement agency's brutality on these young innocent men to force to accept a crime that is not committed by them which is a violation of human rights.

"The influence is more important than skill when it comes to promotions."

The film has two phases and they were not focused on any particular characters. It is a couple of different events based flick that connected to each other by the characters. But everything is about corruption in the police force and common people who affected by that. Kind of unpredictable scenes with the decent twists. The first half takes place in Andhra Pradesh with the backdrop of some r...

(CASTELLANO) Interrogation —Visaranai— es una película durísima. De esas que no se ven para pasar el rato, sino para salir con mal cuerpo y con la cabeza dando vueltas. Está basada en hechos reales, y eso pesa en cada escena. No porque la película lo subraye constantemente, sino porque todo lo que cuenta tiene esa sensación terrible de realidad posible, de abuso cotidiano, de gente pobre atrapada en un sistema que puede triturarla sin que casi nadie pregunte por ella.

La historia arranca con varios trabajadores tamiles detenidos por la policía y torturados para que confiesen un delito que no han cometido. Ya solo esa parte es difícil de ver. La violencia no aparece como espectáculo, sino como método. Golpes, humillaciones, miedo, cansancio, indefensión. La película te mete en un lugar donde la verdad no importa, donde lo único que importa es cerrar un caso, fabricar culpables y demostrar poder sobre cuerpos que no cuentan.

Lo más duro es que Interrogation no convierte la tortura en un episodio aislado de “policías malos”. Lo que muestra es algo más enfermizo: una maquinaria. Hay corrupción, jerarquías, miedo entre los propios agentes, intereses políticos y una cadena de obediencias donde los más débiles siempre acaban pagando. La película entiende que el horror no está solo en quien pega, sino en todo el sistema que permite que pegar sea útil.

También funciona muy bien porque no necesita grandes discursos. La puesta en escena es seca, directa, casi asfixiante. Todo parece sucio, cerrado, sin salida. Los personajes no son héroes diseñados para ganar una batalla moral; son hombres corrientes, pobres, desplazados, que no entienden del todo qué está pasando y que solo intentan sobrevivir. Esa falta de control es lo que más angustia produce.

A pesar de verla en versión original con subtítulos, la película atrapa. Quizá incluso eso ayuda a sentir más la distancia, la vulnerabilidad de quien no domina el idioma del lugar donde le están acusando, golpeando y des...